Boy Scout leader dies on Father’s Day hike with 2 sons, troop through New Hampshire

CONCORD, N.H. — A Boy Scout leader from Maryland died of an apparent heart attack while on a Father’s Day hike in New Hampshire’s White Mountains with his troop, which included his two sons, authorities said. Vernon “Rick” Rippeon of Westminster, Maryland, was one of four adults leading the 13-member group on the first day of a planned five-day hike in the presidential mountain range, said Lt. Wayne Saunders of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. The boys ranged in age from about 11 to 17. Saunders said a call regarding a medical emergency came in at about 11:45 a.m. Sunday from the Crawford Path on Mount Pierce, known as the oldest continuously maintained footpath in the United States. He said Rippeon suffered a heart attack about 1½ miles up the trail. CPR was started almost immediately, but efforts to revive Rippeon were not successful, and he died on the trail. “It starts to gain elevation quite quickly,” Saunders said of the trail, but the group hadn’t been hiking that long. “It’s one of those odd things. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, and it was fairly quickly,” Saunders said. “He just sat down on a rock and collapsed.” Gunnar Burdt, scoutmaster of Troop 735 of Gamber, just outside of Baltimore, said the nearly three-mile hike to an Appalachian Mountain Club hut was planned by Rippeon, a “high-adventure” outdoors trip in scouting, where “you go do something that’s going to push your limits and tests your will,”… [Read full story]